The applicant has been manufacturing front loading garbage trucks for many years. The Half/Pack® line of vehicles has been very successful. Front-loading waste-collecting and hauling vehicles are ubiquitous in the commercial and residential refuse collection industry. Typically, when front-loading is employed, a heavy-duty truck or a like, steerable vehicle is provided with a pair of hydraulically-actuated front forks situated to extend in front of the vehicle. The forks can be raised, lowered and tilted in front of the driver's cab so that an operator can see the forks, guide the forks into lifting engagement with a front-loadable refuse container and lift the container with the forks.
Conventionally, fork-accepting pockets are provided at the sides of fork-liftable refuse containers. The pockets may be made entirely of metal and may be welded to the metallic sidewalls of a standard-width refuse collecting bin or they may be formed as integral extensions of the metallic bottom floor of the collecting bin. A standard-width refuse collecting bin may be one having a width of approximately 81 inches if it is a so-called, 2 yard to 6 yard refuse bin as used in the USA. Bin widths and/or fork spacing distances may vary somewhat in different locations.
During a waste collection operation which takes place under the fork lift approach, the fork-liftable bin is often placed and oriented so that a collections vehicle can be easily drive forward towards a back wall of the bin and insert its forks into fork-receiving pockets of the bin, under driver supervision. The fork insertion operation may include the step of pre-aligning the forks so they can extend forward clear of the back wall and the step of tilting the forks so that they will enter fork-receiving openings of the pockets as the vehicle drives forward. The vehicle driver and/or an additional fork operator is/are responsible for angling, altering the height of, or otherwise aligning the forks with the pocket openings as the collections vehicle drives forward so that the forks will properly engage with the pockets. After the forks are fully inserted into the pockets, the cab driver and/or the assisting operator can initiate a motorized (e.g., hydraulic) operation which will untilt and/or lift the inserted forks and thereby raise the refuse bin off the ground for transporting it or emptying its contents. Often the contents of the fork-lifted bin are emptied into a rear-mounted hopper that sits behind the driver's cab. An over-the-top translating action is often used to position the lifted bin over the truck's back hopper and to dump the container's refuse into the back hopper.
The front-loading lift and/or dump-over-the top operation is typically performed under manual-control. Controllers such as air-powered hydraulic actuators or other such motor controls are typically provided inside the drivers cab so that an in-cab operator (the driver or another person) can manipulate them in order to activate hydraulic pistons or other motor means in a desired sequence so as to move the forks simultaneously and the fork-supported refuse bin and so as to bring the bin and forks into manually-determined positions.
FIGS. 1A and 1B show a prior art refuse body as would be mounted on a vehicle as would be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art. The forks 2,3 may connect to a container such as a semi-automated collection container (U.S. Pat. No. 5,639,201 incorporated herein by reference) sold by the sister company of the applicant whereby this device has a side loading feature that can side load residential cans into the container 4 in front of the cab of the vehicle with a loading grasper 5 partially obscured by view. See FIGS. 2A and 2B as well. Upon loading the container 4 to a sufficient degree with the grasper 5, the container 4 can be rotated with the frame arms 12,13 about pivots 6,7 simultaneously with the container 4 then directed over the cab protector 8 and into the receiver 9 of the body 1 for hauling from one location to another as would be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art. This successful design improvement for robotic assistance is seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,639,201 which issued in 1997 to John D. Curotto.
The major part of an extendible robotic arm mechanism can be mounted to a front sidewall of an intermediate container. Only a small and flattened-when-retracted, cart-grasping part of the robotic arm fits along the curb-side of the refuse container. Thus the negative impact on the width-wise volume of the container is minimal. Remote controls are provided in the vehicle cab for allowing the driver to automatically and hydraulically extend the robotic arm out from along the front wall of the intermediate container, this causing the arm to extend outwardly (to the right in the USA) to reach a curb-side waste item. Further remote controls are provided for causing the flattened-when-retracted, grasping part of the robotic arm to automatically wrap itself around the waste basket or other refuse item. Another remote actuator automatically causes the robotic arm to rotate about a pivot point such that the arm lifts the waste item and rotationally translates it to a position over an open top of the low-profile, intermediate container. The grasping action of the robotic arm may then be undone so as to dump the waste item into the intermediate container. Alternatively, if an open-top or swivel-top waste basket is used, its contents will naturally empty into the intermediate container as the arm's rotational translation proceeds past a 90 degree rotation point. The robotic arm is then rotated back in the other direction, and if a residential waste container is still grasped, the grasping action of the robotic arm may then be undone so as to return the waste basket to a position near its point of origin.
In one embodiment, the intermediate container is a so called, 4-yard bin having a height dimension of about 66 inches and a length of about 56 inches. The robotic arm has a sliding plate mechanism which allows its grasping portion to reach out to the curb a distance of about 60 inches from the right sidewall of the bin and to retract a grasped load about the same distance back toward the bin (the intermediate container). These slide out, grasp, and rotate mechanisms are made sufficiently strong to allow the robotic arm to grab waste baskets having residential refuse volumes in the range of 32-106 gallons. Total cycle time from reach out, to grab, rotate, empty, and return can be as little as about 4 seconds. (Cycle time may vary as a function of reach out distance and other parameters.) The relatively low height of the 4-yard bin allows the truck driver to easily look out his front window and see what is being dumped from the rotated waste basket into the bin while the driver sits reposed in the truck's cab, operating the remote actuators of the robot's slide-out extender, grasper and rotator mechanisms. A screen-like windguard at the front of the bin allows the driver to look forward ahead of the bin while keeping in-bin refuse from being easily blown out by air flow. The driver does not need to step out of the vehicle during the collections operation unless he or she spots unacceptable materials being dropped in, in which case he/she may have to manually separate away such unacceptable material. The relatively low height of the 4-yard bin also helps to reduce the amount of energy consumed by the vehicle with each grab, rotate and dump cycle. The low height of the 4-yard bin further helps to reduce the amount of noise made by the vehicle, as the robot arm successively reaches out, grasps, rotates, dumps and returns one curb-side basket after the next while the vehicle drives down a residential street. The volume of the intermediate container is not substantially consumed in the width-wise direction by the front-mounted robotic arm mechanism because a bulk part of the robotic mechanism sits on the front side of the container (4-yard bin). When the full volume of the standard-sized intermediate container is filled, a frontal lift-and-dump-over-the-top may be carried out to make room for additional refuse. FIG. 1B shows the typical dumping of prior art containers 4 with the frame arms 12,13.
While the container 4 of U.S. Pat. No. 5,639,201 can be removed from forks similar to forks 2 and 3, with the disengagement of an electrical connection running along cross bar 10, the frame arms 2 and 3 might be able to pick up a traditional container in a similar manner as the container 4 is picked up and dumped. However, other than picking up and dumping containers 4 into receiver 9, there is little other versatility for the vehicle 1. Furthermore, the forks 2 and 3 must always be lifted simultaneously together with the frame arms 12 and 13 rotating together. Although frame arms 12,13 are connected to separate cylinders 14,15, the cylinders 14,15 are traditionally simultaneously operated together to rotate the frame arms 12,13 simultaneously.
In today's environment, municipalities and others may have a need to multi task vehicles for various uses. Specifically, after a snow storm, garbage trucks may not be able to be deployed until the streets are cleared. Furthermore, or alternatively, a municipality may have only a limited number of snow plows on hand. Accordingly, a garbage vehicle may be left in a waiting status until the streets are cleared sufficiently enough for use. Furthermore, although a single container can be lifted simultaneously the forks 2,3 such as the container 4. Other options may be desirable for an improved system to be available as an option to municipalities or other customers for various uses.